


solid ground

by tryslora



Series: 1000 follower celebration [10]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anchors, Derek Comes Back, First Kiss, Future Fic, Inspired by Music, Jackson Comes Back, M/M, Tumblr Prompt, Werewolf Jackson Whittemore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 05:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5615878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been six years since Derek left Beacon Hills, when he comes home again. He's not sure what he expects to find in the McCall Pack, but it slowly becomes a home, and one person becomes something more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	solid ground

**Author's Note:**

> This is my tenth (late) prompt for my 1k follower celebration on tumblr. Anonymous asked "For follower prompts, halemore or stackson to the song Stay the Frank Pole Remix with Dia Frampton please. Thank you for doing this for your followers!". I went with Halemore since I've had a couple of Stackson already, and I'm not sure this exactly fits the song lyrics, but it was definitely inspired by it. Broken boys who end up giving each other a taste of solid ground.
> 
> 2017-02-27 -- This has been [translated into Russian](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9858563)!

Derek waits another six years before he comes back to Beacon Hills. There’s a symmetry in the time frame, even though there is no crisis that pulls him back this time. He opens his loft, feels the heft of the door sliding open like he’s walking back into a life he left behind. He doesn’t know what he expects to find, but it’s dull and grey and smells faintly of dust even though he’s been paying someone to stop in and clean it once a week.

He drops his bag on the downstairs bed, then reconsiders and moves it to the floor. He yanks the sheets and comforter off the bed and bundles them up, walking over to the laundry room he had set up while he was gone, the machines still shiny and new. He shoves them all into the industrial sized washer and digs for the laundry detergent he left behind six years ago under the kitchen cabinet so he can start it running.

At least one of the beds will be worth sleeping on, as long as he goes out to get fresh pillows.

He needs food anyway, so he needs to get out. He needs to remember how to live in Beacon Hills like the adult he has become.

Even if Beacon Hills makes him want to return to that broken boy he was as a teenager. Even if Beacon Hills wants to force him to regress.

#

He texts Scott after two days in Beacon Hills. He doesn’t know for certain who’s still in the area, but he kept in touch with Scott after that first year of silence. It’s a short conversation that ends with Derek cautiously inviting Scott and whoever is part of his pack into Derek’s home for the evening. It’s been six years—in that time, the high school students that he knew have graduated, gone to college, wandered off to parts unknown. He knows Scott graduated with a degree in Biology a year ago, and is now at medical school rather than the veterinary school he’d always planned on. He’s heard that Lydia is working on her PhD at MIT, and that Danny has a job in Silicon Valley. Everything else is a blur.

Stiles arrives first, in a flurry of chaos, followed quickly by two younger wolves, one of whom Derek only barely recognizes as Liam, Scott’s first beta. He greets them all as they come in a flood after that: Scott along with Kira, and Isaac back from France to attend medical school with Scott. Mason and Brett, Tracey, and he finally is introduced to Hayden. He already knows that Malia is gone, living in Argentina with Cora. He asks after Danny and Lydia, and is in the middle of taking down their numbers in his phone when the loft slides open once more and Derek looks up to see Jackson standing there, scent wary and uncertain.

“Get in here,” Stiles calls out, and Jackson slides the door closed behind himself.

Derek motions and Jackson finally steps forward, scent still bitter and sharp and nervous. It eases as he joins the pack, falls onto the sofa between Mason on one end and Liam and Hayden on the other. Jackson’s familiar with these wolves, at ease with the pack.

Which means it’s Derek’s presence that’s setting him off.

The evening goes by in a flurry of music, alcohol, and food. Jordan shows up late with a younger, new wolf. Derek doesn’t catch his name, although he hears the story of the boy’s rescue from certain death and his unexpected bite.

It’s not Derek’s pack—definitely not the _Hale_ pack—but it feels good to be with them all. Derek slowly relaxes, chats with the others, and wonders if maybe this time he can find peace in Beacon Hills.

#

The loft was expanded while Derek was gone, the gaping hole becoming a new part of the first floor with a full kitchen and the laundry room along with a second bathroom installed in what used to be the apartment next door. Derek disappears into the kitchen at one point, stays there to breathe for a bit, taking in scents and sifting through them, learning the ones that have yet to become familiar, and cataloging changes in the ones he hasn’t seen for six years or in one case, longer.

“So you’re Derek Hale.” Brett leans against the doorway, arms crossed and head tilted, nostrils flared. Talbot, born wolf, dating Mason… Derek knows the salient details even if he’s not sure if they’ve met before tonight. “Sometimes they talk about you like you’re a god among born wolves.”

“I doubt it,” Derek says, turning back to finish filling a bucket of ice and grab more drinks to carry out. “I wasn’t a good alpha.”

“But you know how it works and Scott still doesn’t,” Brett says with a small shrug. “I help, as much as I can, but I’ve been with Satomi’s pack since I was twelve. I don’t remember as many details as you do.”

“I was only sixteen when the house burned.” Derek keeps his voice as even as he can. “I doubt I’m that much better than you. The only difference is that my mother was Talia Hale.”

“It’s a big difference,” Brett says quietly. “We all knew who the Hales were. We would’ve come here when we were hunted—for sanctuary—but you were already gone. When we got here, we found Satomi and she took me and my sister in. But it wasn’t the same as being with born wolves.”

There’s something crawling up Derek’s back, pricking close to his spine, and he sets down the glass he holds. “Pack is what you make of it,” he says quietly. “There are differences between born and being bitten, yes, but if you don’t hold on to what you’ve got, you won’t have anything at all. I’m not going to be a better packmate because I know what it was like to smell the world differently before I could walk. They aren’t anything less because they’ve had to learn to control their tempers. Scott’s a good Alpha.”

“I know.” Brett’s arms are still crossed, his head still tilted as he walks closer, expression searching for something as he looks at Derek. “But some of them don’t get that. Some of them have been waiting for you to come back here, like you’re going to fix the pieces of this pack that still don’t work.”

“Are you officially with Scott now?”

“I’m with Mason, and Mason’s with Scott.” Brett’s grin is quirked on one side. “So yes, I’m with Scott. And so are you.” There’s a small pause, and Brett nods slightly. “Welcome to the pack.”

There are scents in the air, heavy and thick, and Derek knows there was another conversation happening here. But he’s out of practice, he’s been on his own too long, and he has no idea what Brett was trying to tell him.

The thing is, he’d ask Scott outright, but he’s not sure Scott knows, either. Brett’s aware of something broken in the pack, and he’s asking Derek to look at it. Fix it.

But the pack looks good from where Derek sits. If anything doesn’t fit, it’s Derek himself.

#

Jackson shows up two days later, standing on the threshold even after Derek slides the door open. His feet are planted so carefully that Derek thinks he’s focusing on staying in place, and nerves rise like the scent of acid in his nose.

“Are you coming in?” Derek asks, and Jackson takes two steps forward, just enough to make it through the door before Derek slides it shut.

“Are you going to make me leave again?” Jackson asks, and the underlying worry has a fury about it, hitting Derek hot and hard with the strength of the chemosignals wafting off the younger man. “Because I’m part of McCall’s pack. I’m not going anywhere.”

Derek blinks. “Is that what’s bothering you? That I’m going to come in and try and take over from Scott and go back to what was here six or seven years ago? No, Jackson. I wouldn’t ask you to go. I didn’t make you go the first time. You left.”

Jackson’s gaze narrows and he comes in close, grabs on to Derek’s shoulder and pulls himself closer yet, burying his nose at the base of Derek’s jaw. Derek growls, but stays perfectly still, letting Jackson take in his scent.

“My parents told me that you told them to get me out of here.” Jackson’s tone is flat, guarded.

 _If you want him to be safe, he should be anywhere but Beacon Hills_.

Yeah, Derek remembers that.

He turns away, heads into the loft and drops onto the couch, grabbing the remote to pause the documentary that was playing on the television when Jackson knocked. “I told them you’d be safer somewhere else,” Derek says quietly. “I was a crappy alpha. You know that. I should never have bitten you. Or anyone else. Instinct made me look for a pack, and instead I ended up with dead teenagers, a lizard monster, and a crazy uncle. It didn’t go well.” He glances at Jackson, where he lingers just inside the door. “And you survived, didn’t you?”

Jackson comes across slowly, dropping his keys on a table, throwing his jacket over a chair. He sits on the end of the couch and slouches back, even though Derek hasn’t invited him to stay. “Survived, yes,” Jackson mutters. “It was shit, in London. You didn’t warn me that the worst part was going to be that I was away from my alpha. I didn’t know that part was going to _hurt_.”

“I didn’t know,” Derek admits, because there are a lot of things he does know, but a lot of little tiny details that didn’t occur to him. They’d never been important before. “And you never said.”

“Why would I have said anything? _You sent me away_.” There’s still hurt in Jackson’s voice and in his scent, fresh and angry and unexpected. “If you didn’t want me here as your pack, I wasn’t going to tell you that I needed you. You wanted to _kill_ me when I was the kanima. You never wanted to bite me in the first place.”

Derek can’t deny that. “I was an asshole,” he says softly. “I may have been six years older than you, but I wasn’t all that much more mature, and I was dealing with grief. Not an excuse, no, but a reason. I’d like to think that I’ve grown up enough that we can be in the same pack now.”

Jackson nods once, arms crossed as he slouches, staring at the ground. He doesn’t look like he’s planning on moving any time soon, so Derek leans back and relaxes, the space of an empty couch cushion between them. Derek starts the show again, the voiceover a soothing not quite monotone.

“Stiles told me,” Jackson says quietly. “I don’t know if he was trying to make it seem like my own issues didn’t matter, or if he was making excuses for you, or if he just wanted me to know that you were as fucked up as I am. But he told me. About Paige, about Kate. About Jennifer.”

The names don’t hurt the way they used to. After six years, Derek can look back on those relationships and acknowledge what they meant and more importantly, what they didn’t mean. He stares at the TV. “So, you now know that I killed my first girlfriend when she rejected the bite. That my second girlfriend committed statutory rape and killed most of my family. And that I dated a murderous druid who used me against my own pack.” His smile is thin when he points out, “I’ve had healthy relationships as well in the last dozen years.”

“I haven’t.” Jackson snorts softly. “You have death issues, I just have abandonment issues. My birth parents. My alpha. My adoptive parents—who still live in London and won’t even fly back to the States to visit me. Lydia, Danny. Stiles thinks that everyone you’ve ever dated was willing to die or kill to get away from you. Whereas everyone just wants to walk away from me, and does.”

“What are you trying to say, Jackson?” Derek looks over at him, finds that Jackson is looking back at him, gaze calm and even, the nerves held at bay.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Jackson says carefully. “You are the first one to ever bother coming back. So thank you for that.”

Derek doesn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t come back for Jackson. He didn’t even come back for Scott or the pack. He came back because in the end, Beacon Hills is where he belongs.

#

Jackson comes by regularly, sometimes alone, sometimes with other members of the pack. Spring edges into summer, and even though Scott and Isaac finish their first year of medical school, and the younger pack members finish out their college years as well, Derek notes that Lydia doesn’t reappear in Beacon Hills.

Jackson doesn’t say anything in May or June, but as many of the pack have more free time, Derek sees the tight press of his lips and the lines around his eyes.

The pack spends more time at Derek’s, claiming that he has more room than their family homes or small college apartments. He doesn’t mind the company, and as summer starts to give way to cooler nights and another tenant vacates their apartment, Derek looks into what it would take to build down from his loft, dropping stairs into the apartment below his and knocking out walls from that into the place next to it. He wants a large room for social activities, and perhaps two small guest rooms. A third bathroom. Maybe a fourth.

It occurs to him, in the back of his mind, that he’s turning this apartment building into a pack home.

Jackson stays late, after the pack leaves, sprawled on the couch, and Derek doesn’t mind the company. Sometimes Derek heads to the upstairs bedroom and comes back down in the morning to find Jackson sprawled on the sofa, asleep, or more rarely, curled in the spare bed.

It’s a strangely peaceful life, reminds Derek of the way it used to be, before he made the mistake of falling in love for the first time.

#

Derek’s been in Beacon Hills for seven months as Christmas approaches. He’s figured out his place in Scott’s pack—big brother and advisor. He’s built a bond with most of the pack members, and found a new best friend in Jordan. It’s a relief to have someone his age to spend time with.

And then there’s Jackson, who almost lives in his apartment and the place smells like him to the point where Derek doesn’t want to tell him to leave. It complicates his life, because he doesn’t want this, or need it, and he doesn’t know what Jackson is thinking. But he’s there, and Derek just lets him be.

They’re coming up on Christmas, and Derek has a tree in the corner and everyone from the pack has dropped off gifts. He hasn’t mentioned his birthday, but there are a few packages wrapped in paper that is distinctly _not_ holiday related, and he knows Jordan and Stiles both have access to official records. There are packages there for Cora, Malia, Danny and Lydia as well; Scott’s convinced them all to return.

And something’s wrong with Jackson.

Derek can’t tell what it is, can just smell the frustration and sorrow on his skin, seeping into the air of Derek’s apartment, lingering on the fabric of the sofa. But Jackson doesn’t seem to want to talk, just sits in his corner and sulks quietly.

The TV plays quietly after the pack leaves one night. The apartment is empty, waiting for Cora and Malia to drive up on Sunday, and Lydia and Danny will fly in Monday. Jackson sits in the corner of the couch as if he can hide there, a cup of coffee cradled in his hands.

Derek brings his own cup of coffee out and takes his space on the other end of the couch. “I’m going to be officially old on Tuesday,” he says.

Jackson makes a noise that could be agreement, or could be amusement. Derek can’t tell.

“I turn 30 this year. Which means I’m more of an adult than the rest of you.”

This time Jackson snorts, and Derek glances over at him.

“That means if you want to talk to me, I’ll listen. Whatever it is,” Derek says quietly. “We’re friends.”

“You’re my anchor.” Jackson looks up at the ceiling. “For whatever that’s worth. It’s not what I wanted. It’s probably not what you want. But I figured you should know.”

“Jackson.”

Jackson sets the mug down on the coffee table, pushes himself to his feet. “Never mind. This is—there’s no point here.”

“Is this because Lydia’s coming back?” Derek can see it. She’s the first love of his life, and the one that left him behind when he needed it. He knows Lydia stopped speaking to Jackson when he left, knows she never really acknowledged his return. “Or is it about seeing Danny again?”

Jackson stops mid-step and turns back to face Derek, mouth slightly open. “You have no idea,” he says slowly. “You actually have absolutely no idea.”

Derek’s nostrils flare; his mouth opens, and he tastes the air, taking more scent in, rolling it around on his tongue. Anger, fury, nerves, frustration. Jackson at war with himself, as if he could take one step back and one step forward and either would make sense. Derek sees claws, just before Jackson curls his hands into fists by his side.

But he has no idea what Jackson’s talking about.

“You could tell me,” he points out.

“Are you really living here, or are you just waiting for this pack to dissolve and leave you again?” Jackson asks. “Or is it just me? Don’t answer that; it’s just me. I get that. But I want you to know, I’m not leaving. I’m not going anywhere, Derek. I won’t be safer somewhere else, I won’t be happier somewhere else. I’m not Scott’s pack, I’m yours. It’s that stupidly simple, Derek.”

He’s hiding something. Jackson’s heart rate ratchets up, nerves are more bitter than the heat of anger in his scent.

Derek feels his own heart thump as he tastes something else on the air, a hint of something unexpected. Desire. Longing. A small hint of musk. He swallows hard, not knowing how he’s missed this.

“Oh.”

Jackson laughs dryly. “Yeah. Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to impinge on your life.”

“I’m not going to leave you, either.” Derek nods at the couch. “Sit down, Jackson. Now that we’ve established that neither of us are going anywhere, sit down.”

Jackson sits on the edge of the sofa, closer to the middle than the end, and Derek edges closer to him, meeting him where their thighs are lined up, pressed lightly against each other. Derek sets his hand on Jackson’s thigh and feels him ease, the nervous motion of his body going still.

Derek hasn’t been thinking about this. Not because he wouldn’t want it, but because he wouldn’t let himself see it. Couldn’t let himself see it. He knows that his place is better now, filled with Jackson’s scent. He knows that he feels solid here, more stable than he’s been in years. He knows that there’s a chance to be taken, and Jackson’s pushing at it, waiting and worried that Derek will just let it go.

“I trust you,” Derek says slowly, waits for Jackson to inhale and let it out with a shallow nod. “And you trust me.” It’s not a question, but Jackson answers the statement with another nod as well. “Then don’t go.” Derek doesn’t hold Jackson in place, just leans in carefully and meets him for a gentle, quick kiss. It’s barely more than a brush of lips, enough for Derek’s scruff to graze along Jackson’s shaved chin. Enough for Jackson to catch his breath, eyes going wide.

“Is this all right?” Derek asks, one hand coming up to cup Jackson’s chin so he can feel the nod, feel the words when Jackson whispers _yes_. “Then stay,” Derek says.

And Jackson does.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're curious about Derek's timeline, this is what I'm using for this particular fic:
> 
> 2004 - Paige dies (Derek is 15)  
> 2005 - Kate, Hale fire (Derek is 16)  
> 2011 - Derek comes back to Beacon Hills, Laura dies (Jackson is 16, Derek is 22)  
> 2012 - Derek leaves Beacon Hills after s4 (Derek is 23)  
> 2018 - Derek comes back to Beacon Hills (Jackson is 23, Derek is 29 and turns 30)
> 
> You can also find me [on tumblr](http://tryslora.tumblr.com).


End file.
